American Fez

Doge's Dirge

It was, I believe, Marinetti and the Italian Futurists who declared that the canal of Venice should be filled-in with rubble from the destruction of its waterside palaces. Nowadays, of course, we all agree that these gondola choked highways should be filled-in with all the zillions of unsold copies of Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman CDs that PBS fund-raisers can't get rid of.
Nevertheless, I myself will be cruising the narrow streets of Venice until the middle of next week, where I will be reluctantly filling-in the coffers of local boatmen and restaurants with my hard-earned Euros. Although, as regular readers might suspect, I prefer to say I shall be visiting the Veneto rather than vacationing in Venice since it sounds far less touristy. I depart tomorrow and doubt very much that any screeds of interest will appear in this space before next Thursday.

Anti-Semanticism

Three valuable members of staff are missing from work today for Yom Kippur. Frankly I blame the Jews ....

Darwin's Origin of the One-upmanship

I am a son of Adam
You have evolved from the apes
He is some sort of god-awful goblin changeling thing.

I survive because I am the fittest
You survive because you pay me to look after you
He is as dead as a Dodo

The Ancient Mariner at Lunch

I have recently returned from circumnavigating the salad bar at my local Shaw's Supermarket. Magellan may have sailed further into uncharted realms, but I doubt that he experienced as much uncertainty and ill-omen as I did amid the lettuce and tomatoes. Darwin's voyage of discovery may have penetrated more exotic ecosystems, but his microscope cannot have encountered any specimens more fearsome, alien and repulsive than those that wriggled between the teeth of my tongs.
Aside from the usual, unappetizing array of salad bar items such as scrimshaw cauliflower and dead-man's cucumber, there were macaroni-shaped pasta worms drowning in some sort of mayonnaise scum; rubberized eggs, too; broccoli rendered as verdigris carbuncles; mushrooms that might have been grown in the dimmest recesses of a slave ship's hold; and various other undesirable, indescribable types of organic matter that had been lately dredged from their watery grave. These were the monsters of the deep; vegetable krakens, giant squids and sliced albatrosses that lurked beneath a bed of brined lettuce and scurvy onion. Talk about a "nightmare life-in-death" that "thicks men's blood with cold,"  I think tomorrow I'll hike overland to Dante Ristorante instead. I hear tell that they do a good Italian cold-cut special, even if waiting in the long lunchtime line is purgatory.

Crap Men

1. Scene: The Draper household. Morning

Betty: What's the matter, Don?

Don: Nothing. I'm fine. I guess it's just that I think that the new black maid has smoked all of little Sally's cigarettes.

Betty: It wasn't her Don. It was me. I'm pregnant and I really need the high tar to calm me down.

Don: Okay .... but hey, have you seen my new nylon, sta-prest contraceptives anywhere?

Betty: (bursts into tears): Don, Don, are you having an affair?

Don: No, of course not. But I will be working very late at the office tonight. It's this new TV show account we're working on. We've run out of ideas.

2. Scene: The offices of Boring Blooper advertising. Later that day.

Pete: Hey, Peggy. What do you think of my lame Steve Buscemi impersonation?

Peggy: It's great Pete. I'd definitely sleep with it.

Joan: Poor suburban Peggy. Frankly, it'd take at least a reasonably decent Richard Gere impersonation to get me out of this girdle. I mean this is a major prime time drama, not a daytime soap, although I'll admit that you can only tell the difference because of the amount of money they've spent on the sets and wardrobe.

Peggy: Thanks for the advice Joan. I'll bear it mind next time I'm desperately trying to develop another ludicrous plot line for my character.

3. Scene: the boardroom at Boring Blooper. Lunchtime

Harry: Well, I don't know about everybody else, but my character is so sick of only having scenes in this damn boardroom.

Paul: Mine too. Let's all go out and have martinis for lunch.

Ken: Good idea. Nothing much is happening so the audience certainly won't miss us.

Director: Actually guys, if you can just hang around for another series or so. We need all the static electricity from your clothes to keep the studio lights working

(Don Draper enters)

Don: I don't care if I missed anything because I know it was all just comic relief dialogue and goofing off anyway. So. Anyone got any ideas about this TV show thing.

Ken: What about a Martin Scorsese directs an episode of "The Guiding Light" kinda thing.

Don: Yeah, let's go with that. I really can't be bothered to think of anything else.

Paul: Great. That's another episode in the can. So those martinis - who's buying?

Sal: Mine's a cosmopolitan.

The End

Seen But Not Heard

The current squabble surrounding Obama's speech to school children is simply an example of - unfortunately ironic - infantile political grandstanding on both sides of the political perambulator. Nobody ever thinks to ask the kids themselves what they want to do. All those little Cassandras and Jeremiahs would definitely supply a far more cogent and sensible response than all the hysterical politicians and pundits combined. Yes, let the disenfranchised classroom horde decide whether or not they desire to be harangued by Barack "Simon Says" Obama for hours on end. Frankly, having read the speech online, if I were still a runny-nosed, ink-splattered student I know I'd much rather hear the Hunchback of Notre Dame read The Swiss Family Robinson backwards in Hindustani than listen to my President's sanctimonious and predictable waffle. But then I'd also like to shower Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty with rotten eggs during recess for good measure. Power to the people, however small they may be.

Great Buildings of the World

The great cathedral of Saint Extortionata de Aisore in the city of Schitz was built during the pontificate of Inbred VII in the twelfteenth century. Famed for its stained-glass windows depicting Saint Extortionata readmitting the money-lenders back into the temple, the cathedral can also boast possession of a holy shekel believed to have been left by our Lord as a tip at the Last Supper. This priceless relic from the messiah's own purse is displayed in a majestic collection box fashioned from human teeth and is viewable for a fixed fee.
Visitors can also admire the many classical paintings adorning the cathedral's unique buttock-shaped altar. These include Scribbelino's Jeremiah Eating the Last Fig in the Box, Bubonik the Younger's Figures Consumed by the Fires of Hell, and an inflatable crucifix attributed to Andy Warhol.
Musically, Saint Extortionata's has been blessed with many fine organists over the years: Elton Johannes (1582-1603); Richard the Little (1721-1725); and Amon Duul (third album). Additionally, there are four sets of choristers in residence: The Schitz Boys Choir; The Schitz Small Boys Choir; The Schitz Very Small Boys Choir; and the Schitz Ultrasound Choir. All of these can be heard singing Te-Diums during the cathedral's annual Kreschendo Jamboreum de Musique on Unmentionable Day.

The World's Most Bizarre Punishments

It is an oft-repeated fact that roughly seventy-percent of the Earth's surface is water, but did you also know that a further twelve percent of our world is covered with golf courses? That's even more acreage than colossal land masses such as airport shopping and unsold copies of the Boston Globe take up.
Golf, usually pronounced "goaf," is a form of self-flagellating penance performed by misogynist weaklings armed with over-sized dental tools. Some woman also undergo golf but they are deemed to be honorary men for the day. The most extreme example of golfing guilt and self-loathing occurred in 1969 when Neil Armstrong had himself fired as far away from human contact as possible so that he could endure pitch-n-putt on a barren rock floating in space.
The aforementioned golf courses, those grassy arenas where golfers submit to their tedious rounds, are generally referred to as "greens." But this is a misleading term because these so-called greens also contain brown sand, blue ponds, and a truly repulsive spectrum of synthetic trouser and sweater color-combinations.
The purpose of the golfing punishment remains unknown, mostly because it is so boring that nobody has bothered to investigate its origins.